


The Best You Can

by iwasanartist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, John Winchester’s Parenting, Past and Present, mildest of mild canon divergence, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-16 02:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17541329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwasanartist/pseuds/iwasanartist
Summary: John may have taught the boys to fight, but Bobby gave them the best life lessons.





	The Best You Can

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roguefaerie (samidha)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/gifts).



Dean hunched over the table and tried to focus on the smudgy newsprint TV guide, desperate for anything Sam might like that they could sneak downstairs to watch after lights out. But Sam’s whine kept breaking his concentration.

"It's not fair, Uncle Bobby! Dad said we could go to the movies for my birthday and that was a month ago, and then he said we’d do it this weekend, and now it’s this weekend, and he left us here!”

“Look, Sam, I’m sorry your dad couldn’t keep up his end of a deal, but those werewolves-”

“I don’t care about the werewolves! I hate him!"

"Hey!" Bobby's voice cut sharp through the air, no longer what passed for gentle and soothing for an old scrapper. "I don't want to hear that kind of talk again, you hear me?"

Dean looked up from the newspaper.

"Look, Bobby-"

"Nope," Bobby kept his eyes on Sam. He didn't even look at Dean, just stuck his arm out and pointed at him. "Both of you kids sit your scrawny little asses down on that chair." For a moment they didn't move. "Boys, did I stutter?!"

Sam and Dean both hurried to the large overstuffed chair and sat on the edge. Bobby's jaw was set. There was something hard in his eyes, and for a minute Dean thought they were in for reaming. But then his gaze softened. He unclenched his jaw and pulled the cap off his head, scratching at an itch behind his ear before turning away with a sigh and staring out the window. If it were anyone else -- a teacher or a coach or even a cop -- Dean would have had a smartass comment locked, loaded and ready to fire. But this was Bobby and something made him stay silent and still except for the comforting shoulder he knocked into Sam.

"Boys, it ain't easy losing someone," Bobby finally said. "Your daddy he...aw hell, I don't expect you'll understand till you're older but take it from me, when you lose someone like he did, it takes a toll. It gets in your head and can mess you up. Mess you up real bad." Bobby coughed and turned back to them, putting his cap back on and in one fluid motion pulling the brim down to keep his eyes in the shadow. He was silent again and rubbed at his face before pushing his cap back to its normal position and looking at them fully again. "My point is, you're dad's doing the best he can with what he's got."

"But he-" Dean knocked his knee into Sam's and let a quiet _shut up_ whisp past his lips. Between that and the raised eyebrow from Bobby, Sam took the hint, huffed and snapped his mouth shut.

"Now, I'm not saying it's what everybody wants," Bobby said. "Hell, it ain't even what everybody needs and sure as hell ain't what they deserve, but he's doing the best he can with what he's got. And sometimes that's all any of us can do. Sometimes it’s something we all _have_ to do. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bobby pointed a finger at Sam. “Now aren’t you supposed to be brushing your teeth or something before bed?”

Sam nodded and stood up, turning a slow circle and trudging toward the staircase. Bobby watched him go before staring down at his shoes and lightly running his fingers across a desk.

“Sam!” he called out as he opened a desk drawer and began rifling through it. “Come back here a second.” Sam returned with a sigh and his arms crossed over his chest. “What’s the point of brushing your teeth if you ain’t got nothing to brush off?”

Sam crinkled his brow and cocked his head.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Stuff’s always building up, every time you eat… Even if you can’t see it, you have to brush it off.”

“Yeah well, may as well make it worthwhile,” Bobby said, pulling his hand from the drawer and tossing a package at Sam. It bounced off his chest and landed in his waiting hands. Sam’s eyes went wide.

“Whoa, Dean, look! It’s a king-size Hershey!” Sam grinned as he held the candy bar up. It was bigger than both of his hands.

“Don’t eat it all at once,” Dean said. “You’ll get sick.”

Sam looked at the chocolate and then back to Dean’s empty hands. His whole demeanor changed in an instant.

“Split it?” he said, holding the bar out to Dean.

“Now hold on just a minute,” Bobby said. “Boy, In what sort of apocalypse world do you think I’m gonna give you a giant candy bar and not give one to your brother, too?” Bobby pulled another bar from the desk drawer and tossed it in Dean’s lap. Sam’s eyes lit up and he crossed the room in two energetic bounds.

“Thanks, Uncle Bobby,” he said, wrapping his arms around Bobby’s middle.

For a second, Bobby held his arms out to his sides, frozen, before relaxing and returning the hug. He gave Sam a pat on the back before pulling away.

“Now get on up there and take care of your business, ya idjit,” Bobby said with a nod toward the stairs. Dean watched as Sam ran upstairs with a smile on face. He watched Bobby turn to a cabinet and pull a small bottle of whiskey out, pouring a few glubs into a tumbler.

Dean looked down at the candy in his hands, slid his fingers underneath the edge of the paper label but didn’t go so far as to pull it off or slide the foil wrapped treat out one end. He could hear Bobby settle into a chair with a sigh and take a nip of his drink before speaking.

“You look like you’ve got something to say,” he said. Dean looked up and saw Bobby sitting across from him, like some sort of redneck Santa. Again, if it were anyone else, Dean wouldn’t hesitate to pop off, but this was Bobby. Him and Pastor Jim were his dad’s best friends. At least, they were his only friends, so they had to be the best, and Bobby’d always been nice to them. That had to count for something.

“It’s just…” Dean fiddled with the wrapper some more, trying to find the words for what had been roiling in his head since Sam’s outburst. “Dad’s not the only one who lost Mom,” he finally said. “Me and Sammy lost her, too, but we don’t get to be dicks about it because we’re sad.”

Bobby took another drink and nodded.

“You’re right,” he finally said. “In a perfect world … well, I guess in a perfect world a lot of things’d be different, but in better world we’d all handle our crap better. But as it happens, this is the only world we got, and things don’t always work that way. And I’ll tell you this, Dean: I can imagine what you’re going through. I really can. But I don’t think you can quite grasp right now just what your dad’s going through. Things are different for them than they were for you and Sam. Time with her, if nothing else.”

“So, what? Are you saying because Dad knew her longer than we did he loved her more? He gets to be more messed up? That’s f-”

“Now, now, no, that’s not what I’m saying,” Bobby said, hands waving in the air to stop Dean’s rant. “Not exactly,” he said. “And it’s not a matter of who *gets* to be anything, it’s just what is.” Bobby paused and stared ad Dean for a moment before speaking again. “What’s the longest you’ve ever been at one school?”

Dean thought back. Usually they were doing good to get a full month. But there was that one place in California. They were there long enough for the basketball season to start and a coach to try to get him onto the youth team.

“A few months in Beacon Hills. It’s in Northern California. Dad was recovering from a pretty nasty hunt.”

“Uh huh. And did you make any friends in this Beacon Hills?”

Dean cocked his head in thought. Friends were never really on the menu for them. They spent most of their time trying not to be noticed or get too attached because they knew they’d be in another town sooner than later. Besides, most of the kids in his grade were little nerds who’d keel over at the sight of spider, forget monsters. But not all of them.

“There was this one guy who was pretty cool. He was a little older - I think he got held back a time or two - but he’d sharpen his pencils down to nubs and use a balloon to shoot them at the bulletin board. Nailed Nixon right between the eyes once.”

“Sounds like a real brain trust,” Bobby said. “Now, imagine one day your friend disappeared. You’d want to find him, wouldn’t you? Do right by him?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“But when your dad comes home and says there’s vampire nest terrorizing a high school down south, you’d pick up and go, right?”

“I guess.”

“Okay. Now, what if it wasn’t your little pencil-shooter that got snatched up. What if it was Sam? Would you leave then?”

“No!” Dean’s eyes went wide. “No, I’d find him.”

“And if they killed him?”

“I’d find whoever took him and rip their lungs out or something!”

“But what about all those people down south dealing with the vampires?”

“Someone else can help them! There are other hunters, we could tip one of them off!”

Bobby leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his drink.

“See my point, Dean?” he said. “You want to help your friend, but you’ll leave him to save a town. You want to help the town, but you want revenge for your brother more. We’re just talking about it, but it’s already in your brain and it won’t let go. You couldn’t go down to help with the vamps, but you could call in some help. That’s-”

“-doing the best I can with what I’ve got,” Dean finished.

Bobby tipped his glass at Dean before draining the rest of it.

“It ain’t a perfect analogy, but it’s all I got. Now are you gonna eat that thing or just let it melt?”

Dean looked down at the chocolate in his hand, ripped off the silver foil and broke off a piece.

* * *

Dean could feel it in his throat. Maybe it was just a garden variety lump. Air trapped from a bad swallow. Or bile from a stomach that wouldn’t stop churning. Or Regret. Maybe even fear. Except Dean knew it wasn’t those things. It was stone cold rage coursing through him.

Rage for the doctors and nurses. The hospital staff. Even Sam had stepped across the line to their side, trying to make him accept the idea that Bobby could die.

But they were all just window dressing for an entire mall’s worth of rage burning for Dick Goddamn Roman. It was all he could think about. Sure, they didn’t know how to kill Leviathans, but there had to be a way. He’d find a way. He’d find it or die doing the best he could-

Dean stopped pacing the hospital floor. The smell of chocolate and whiskey from a long ago memory filled his nose. He looked at Sam. Sam, who looked empty and more lost and alone than Dean had ever seen.

Yeah. Dean wanted to rant and rave and go on a killing spree. But was that all he had? Was it the best he could do? Dean squeezed his eyes shut and was overcome with a memory of crawling into the big bed in Bobby’s guest room, wiping chocolate from Sam’s face while he snored and promising himself that when the chips were down, he’d do better. He’d find more.

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean said. Sam looked up at him from the plastic hospital chair and shook his head as if to say _What could you possibly want now?_  “Come here.” Dean walked over and pulled Sam to his feet and wrapped his arms around him. Sam, slow to respond at first, hugged him back and lowered his head to rest on Dean’s shoulder. Dean could feel him shaking with tears he couldn’t bring himself to shed. “It’s gonna be okay, little brother.”

“You don’t know-”

“Whatever happens,” Dean said forcefully. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure something out. Okay? I promise.”

Sam sniffled, nodded his head and pulled away from Dean. He wiped at his face and his eyes while glancing around the small waiting area. Dean followed his gaze, telling himself he was keeping a lookout for that organ donor creep while steadfastly avoiding the doors to the trauma area. His eyes landed on a vending machine, and a brown wrapper pressed against the glass, just barely hanging on to the ring for slot D4 as another bar butted up against it. Dean couldn’t help but grin as he swatted Sam on the shoulder and motioned him over to the machine.

It only took one bang with the palm of his hand for both candy bars to fall to the bottom. He scooped them out quickly and tossed one to Sam, hurrying away as some squirrelly looking guy in a pair of scrubs, armed with Post-It notes and a pencil stormed back to the machine.

“You know, we could give that guy a buck,” Sam said as they sat back down.

“Are you kidding? You don’t pay for free stuff,” Dean said as grabbed the back flap and pulled the package apart. “Have I taught you nothing?” he continued around a mouthful of the chocolate.

“You know this is like the worst chocolate?”

“Yeah, well. We do the best we can, right?”

Sam glanced over at him, and for a moment, Dean thought he saw a flash of recognition in his eyes before he turned back to the candy.

“Yeah,” he said as he pulled the package open and took a bite. “Yeah, we do.”

But for now, all they could do was wait.


End file.
